The winners of the 2015 Canadian Cover Awards were handed out Tuesday night, at the Alliance for Audited Media sponsored cocktail party, that was well attended on a cold Winter night.

The Canadian Cover Awards recognize and celebrate the success and importance of magazine covers in Canadian single copy sales. Canadian magazine titles were invited to submit top-selling covers for consideration in eight award categories.

Actress and health advocate Lisa Ray will be Canadian Living’s guest editor and cover model for June. Ray is one of the many guest editors that will be featured during the magazines year-long 40th anniversary celebration. Readers are invited to follow the Lisa Ray live cover shoot @CanadianLiving on twitter and Instagram on Friday between noon and 2pm EST. Fans can submit questions on all social media platforms using the hashtag #CL40.

Canada Wide Media, publisher of the KRW Award winning BCBusiness magazine, has appointed WesternSync and its managing partner, Brian Trotter as its executive representative in Ontario and Quebec.

Trotter left his most recent position as national account manager at The Globe & Mail in June to start WesternSync. Venture Publishing also hired the company for representation back in August.

The newly appointed publisher of BCBusiness, Charlene Rooke, has worked with Trotter in the past, when she held the position of editorial director of the content group at The Globe. "I worked successfully with Brian at The Globe across a number of categories," Rooke said. "I look forward to collaborating with him to promote opportunities and deliver solutions to clients and agencies based in the Ontario and Quebec markets."

The NATJA awards honours the best travel writing, photography and promotion throughout the travel industry. Over 650 submissions were received this year from across the globe, and winners were announced on Feb. 11.

Canada's History readers will notice a few changes when they pick up the latest issue, slated to hit newsstands on March 23. Editor-in-chief Mark Collin Reid explains,

In 2015, Canada’s History — formerly The Beaver magazine — will mark its ninety-fifth birthday. As Canada’s second-oldest magazine, we’re proud of our past, but also focused on the future.

For more than a year, the editorial team, led by art director James Gillespie, has worked on a refreshed design that places Canada’s History squarely in the spectrum of twenty-first-century publishing. It was truly a team effort, with special thanks going out to design consultant Karen Simpson for her advice and encouragement.

Magazines Canada and the CMC have released the shortlist of finalists for the Canadian Cover Awards. Winners will be announced February 24 at an awards reception in Toronto, at 6 pm (ET) at the Courtyard Toronto Downtown. Please plan to attend. It’s always a good cocktail party and a chance to mingle with friends and colleagues.

The Canadian Cover Awards honour and celebrate the power and success of magazine covers at the newsstand. Issues from September 2013 to September 2014 were eligible for this year’s awards. The finalists are:

The deadline for submitting online entries to the 61st annual Kenneth R. Wilson awards is 5pm today. Hard copies must be received on Feb. 17 at 5pm.

The KRWs celebrate the best in Canadian B2B publishing. Written, visual, digital and integrated magazine content is being accepted in 25 categories. Winners will be honoured during a gala on June 2 at One King West Hotel in Toronto. Visit the website for more details.

Magazines Canada has developed a set of standard metrics to help the country's magazine media track the engagement and readership of its digital publications.

Along with a taskforce, Magazines Canada developed a set of guidelines to provide advertisers, agencies and publishers with “generally accepted measurement principles,” and a set of standardized measurements were created in five categories: Total unique readers per issue, total number of sessions per issue, total amount of time spent per reader per session, average number of sessions per reader per issue and total accumulated time spent per reader per issue.